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Comment by panny | Hacker News Reader

>I think climate scientists can enumerate major carbon sources and sinks

Science has no idea where 2-3 gigatons of carbon go every year. That's a BIG number. And it is a big deal. And it has been missing for decades now. All the time you were calling someone a science denier, you've been completely unaware that you can't even account for all the major carbon sources/sinks.

https://www2.nau.edu/~gaud/bio326/class/ecosyst/whrcmissc.ht...

https://bioticregulation.substack.com/p/new-global-carbon-da...

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> Science has no idea where 2-3 gigatons of carbon go every year. That's a BIG number.

That's a big number and a small percentage. The latter is what matters.

It's the same order of magnitude as all cars on the road. Not such a big deal huh?

Let me ask you this. Do you own a car? I don't. I take the train.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1185535/transport-carbon...

Look at that, I'm the 1%. What are you doing personally about the climate? I bet you own an air conditioner too. I bet you don't carry 20-30 pounds of groceries a mile every two to three days, do you?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48543350

I bet you don't have a four year degree on the subject either, do you? When was the last time you purchased gasoline? For me it was over a year ago when I had to rent a car for one day.

Go ahead, call me a science denier. I know you want to. You can just absolve yourself of all your carbon footprint by being self righteous about it, can't you?

> Look at that, I'm the 1%. What are you doing personally about the climate?

Virtue signaling has nothing to do with the discussion.

It's not virtue signaling as I don't consider it a virtue. It's over politicized. I'm just pointing out that I do way more than any of you do without any alarmist screeching. I take the train because I like trains. Nice seethe and cope however.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48485177

So instead of funding more research into a potentially important unknown, as you say, we should just.. not?

Science hasn't figured out how the entire planet works yet so we should do less science?

That does seem to be their argument. Lots of trolls in this discussion, we don't need to feed them.

What is the argument then?

I think you read a "not" in my comment that wasn't there, I'm agreeing with you about what the person you responded to seemed to be arguing for (stop the science because it's not good enough). Which is, as Supermancho points out, nonsense.

Oh yeah I totally did.

If science can't explain some part of how a system works, science cant make predictions about that system. It's nonsense.

Science makes predictions that turn out to be true on incomplete theories and systems all the time. Even if we're missing causes for sinks we can make predictions on what happens when there's more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere as the effect of them are well understood.

I don't dispute it. You asked what they were asserting, I answered.

Okay, so climate scientists openly researching and refining their theories around an extremely complex topic (carbon's continually changing relationship to every biosphere on earth) is evidence of... malpractice, conspiracy?

FWIW I was aware of the biosphere as a carbon sink because I learned it in middle school 20 years ago. Thanks for giving me a reason to learn about the interesting and difficult challenges in determining where and through which process that sinking is occurring :)

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